


Art and Soul

by Jet44



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel (Supernatural), Angel Healing, Angel/Human Relationships, Angst, Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Cuddles, Dean Winchester Has Self-Worth Issues, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Dean Winchester, Emotions, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Guilty Dean Winchester, Hugs, Hurt Dean Winchester, Loving Castiel (Supernatural), Loving Dean Winchester, No Smut, Post-Episode: s12e09 First Blood, Soul healing, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 23:34:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17876894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jet44/pseuds/Jet44
Summary: Castiel has the power to heal wounded human bodies. What he needs this time is the ability to heal a bruised and battered human soul. Dean and Sam Winchester's souls, to be exact.After the events of First Blood, Dean is still wounded from having been locked away in solitary confinement. When Cas finds him passed out in the garage clinging to a bottle and his car, Cas petitions Chuck for the ability to heal the invisible wounds his friends still carry. It works - sort of. Allowed access to Dean's soul, he discovers this isn't about fixing; Dean's wounds make him who he is. But he can offer the true comfort Dean needs desperately, and help Dean forgive himself.





	Art and Soul

Dean Winchester was missing.

Cas found him in the bunker garage, sitting on the cement floor in a shadowed corner. His legs were stretched out under the Impala, and his forehead rested lightly on her driver’s door panel, his eyes closed. He had one hand wrapped around a whiskey bottle, and the other rested on Baby’s front tire.

He was snoring.

Castiel tugged the bottle away and gave Dean’s shoulder a light shake. “Dean?”

Dean opened his eyes and turned his face to Cas, his eyes resonating pure exhaustion.

“Are you - cuddling your car?”

Dean let out a groan and wiped grease-stained hands on a nearby pink shop cloth. “So what if I am? No, I - couldn’t sleep, so I changed the oil.”

“You look terrible,” said Cas, touching his shoulder once again to search for any injuries or illness that might be responsible for the ache in Dean’s eyes.

“And you look like a burned-out accountant on the brink of getting a hand tattoo and telling his IRS supervisor to shove it,” said Dean.

There was nothing he could find or fix. He patted the back of Dean’s shoulder, wishing the human didn’t feel so small and tired under his hand. Dean slumped in Cas’s direction, and rested his forehead against the car once again.

Humans were weak. Powerless and power-hungry. Self-absorbed. Violent. Selfish. Base. Cruel. Petty. Greedy.

Heaven’s leadership had indoctrinated Castiel into knowing all of these things about humanity.

But that had been before he’d met Dean Winchester in the pits of hell.

At first, all Castiel felt was disappointment. Their critical mission had failed. They were too late; a righteous man had broken, and with him, the first Seal. The subject of the most difficult rescue Castiel had ever known was gleefully, sadistically torturing souls at Alastair’s command. He tried to kill Cas on sight.

Castiel had gripped his soul tight and raised him from the pit, and somewhere, that rescue turned into a religious experience.

Dean made him _feel_. To an angel used to observing the mechanics of emotion, feeling it was like the rush of a powerful drug through his veins.

Dean was complex. Angry. Dark. Lonely. Shattered by agony and guilt, his real, feeling self boarded up behind a wall of blood and noise and fire. And so, so strong. Scared and hurting and self-loathing to an extent that made Castiel feel emotional pain for the first time. Yet powerfully loving, protective, and searching for the right path forward with an intensity that filled Cas with awe.

Humans were not what they had taught him. This Dean Winchester was dizzyingly messy, illogical, and complicated, but contact with his soul was enough to shake Castiel’s view on humans to its core.

That was the day Castiel had learned what love was, and how beautiful and how painful. He’d imprinted on Dean in a way a gosling might its mother; this was his human, and they were bound on a level unexplainable to any angel who ordered him to harm Dean.

Then he’d met Sam. Just another human. A headstrong, annoying, misdirected human that his Dean loved more than anything in the universe including God, so Cas tried to understand why Lucifer’s intended vessel meant so much to Dean. Eventually he did. Sam was just as special as Dean; different, but so similar. Unbreakable, kind, and stable, Sam was a quiet power for good. Evil underestimated him at its peril.

These two humans were noble and brave and willing to sacrifice everything to save others, and eventually Cas came to understand them, and understand why humanity in general, not just these two men, was so special.

And now, his Dean had was profoundly hurt. He could sense it. He knew enough about the wiring blueprint of the human psychology to know solitary confinement was torture, and why. But on a basic level, he couldn’t understand why being locked in a cell for a month or two could hurt a Winchester. A Winchester who had known a hell of Alastair’s making.

These two could endure things virtually no human could survive, and recover from them in ways that were equally rare.

But Dean was wounded. Aching. And Cas wanted to help.

* * *

 

Chuck looked puzzled. “The world doesn’t need saving? Dean and Sam are alive? Why would you pray for me so insistently?”

Cas looked around, disoriented. They were on the top of a snowy ridge, looking across a great expanse at a roiling thunder cloud. Which appeared to be hailing kumquats. And Chuck - was still Chuck, but surrounded by ten ferrets and wearing red high heels.

“When I first arrived on earth, trauma was a foreign, human concept. A staggering weakness,” said Cas. He frowned and tried to side-step as one of God’s ferrets climbed his leg.

“As was guilt,” said Cas, pressing on despite a set of ferret whiskers tickling his chin.  “How could these creatures even function? They’re as inherently violent and cruel as any angel or demon. But an angel can endure torture, or the death of a brother, or cause the destruction of a city, and move forward. As I have done. Humans are wounded, badly, by trauma and guilt from such events.”

Cas plucked the ferret from his collar. Endearing little creature, actually. It looked at him entirely without fear. Much like a Winchester.

“Something I got the idea to include, after seeing the results of my first creations,” said Chuck. “I didn‘t intend it to be a weakness. I designed empathy, guilt, love, and trauma to be internal checks and balances for a powerful creation granted free will. Without them, humans would destroy each other much as the angels and demons have.”

“I see,” said Cas. “I watch Dean and Sam struggle with trauma. I’ve developed enough empathy that it causes me pain to see my friends in such a state. I ask of you the ability to heal wounds to the soul the way I can heal their physical wounds.”

Chuck smiled. “Fascinating. It gives me hope, you know? To see an angel develop empathy. Why are their souls wounded?”

Cas stared at Chuck, flabbergasted. _Why?_ Why _wouldn’t_ they be? How could they _not_ be?

“The real question is, how have they endured so many wounds without breaking completely?” said Cas, setting down the now-wiggling ferret and eyeing the edge of the storm cloud as it moved closer. A citrus aroma was building in the surrounding atmosphere.

“Ahhh, angels. Always so literal. What is the latest calamity?” asked Chuck.

“Someone imprisoned them in solitary confinement. They found it so intolerable they struck a deal with a reaper for one to die so the other could escape.”

“Ahhhh. I did hear you had slain a reaper,” said Chuck.

“I do not understand the severity of that form of torture,” said Castiel. “I only know Dean said it was worse than hell, and that ever since their return, I have been able to sense that their souls are in acute pain. It is concerning…. and distressing.”

There had been a dull, gnawing ache, a physical one, in Cas’s chest every time he looked at Dean or Sam, or looked into their eyes, or spoke to them. The pain they must be in for it to hurt _him_ ….

Chuck nodded. “I can give you that power. But it will transfer the weight of their wounds to you, just the way physical healing does. You probably won’t feel it, and you’ll be able to heal almost instantly, but if you’re drained from other exertions, know that.”

Cas nodded. The wind was picking up, limonene terpenes saturating the air, and a kumquat hit his shoulder and bounced.

“Use it with care and - not to be too abstract - sensitivity.”

“I shall be - sensitive,” said Cas. His two very favorite humans had taught him that concept, and the concept of irony, by chewing “his feathery ass” out quite viciously when he didn’t get it right. Dean’s soul would probably _bite_ him if he didn’t tread with care.

* * *

 

“Dean.”

They were alone, in the garage. Cas had learned long ago that difficult things had to be approached with humans when they were not in the presence of others.

This place seemed to be a sanctuary for Dean. A safe place to be alone without being alone, caring for the car that had sheltered him and carried him and his brother since childhood. The gleaming black Impala‘s doors were open, and a vacuum hose snaked into the back seats.

“You know I have the ability to touch you and heal your physical body,” said Cas. He’d also learned things had to be approached slowly, and explained.

Dean smiled, looking confused. There was a weight in his eyes behind the smile. “Yeah. We wouldn’t be here and walking if it wasn’t for that.”

“I also have the ability to some extent to comfort and heal your soul. Not all wounds can be healed, but I believe the ones you and Sam carried out of that prison can.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “I’m fine. Not a scratch. That sucked, like, _a lot_ , but it’s over.”

“I don’t believe it is,” said Cas. “I can sense a deep ache within you.”

Dean’s gaze flashed around the room, and he stilled, and thought, trying to make sure he was alone and wouldn’t be observed by Sam or anyone else.

“I feel like I’ve been to Boring Hell,” said Dean. “I’d go back to purgatory, or regular old slice n’ dice hell, before I’d go back to that one. Little tip? Always trust a human to know how to really torture another human.”

“That is a tip I did not wish to be given,” said Castiel, wondering why Dean would want him to know how to more effectively torture humans. Humanity considered torture a horrible sin, did it not? Precisely because of the trauma it inflicted, the trauma he was here to heal. Why did Dean want him to know how better to sin?

Dean chuckled with a bitter grin. “Figure of speech, Cas.”

“Oh. May I attempt to comfort your soul, Dean?”

Dean looked thoroughly weirded out, but didn’t get aggressive. “Is it that horrible - groping - thing you do?”

“No. No,” said Cas hastily. He should’ve led with that. “I don’t have to touch your soul directly. This will not cause you pain - I don’t think. I need only place my palm on your temple, quite gently.”

“You don’t _think_?” Dean took a rapid step back and bumped into the open door of the Impala. He grabbed the frame support, his knuckles going white.

“I’ve never done this before,” admitted Cas.

Dean frowned. “Come to think of it, why haven’t you? It’s not like this is the first time something’s kicked us hard in the soul. It’s not even the _worst_ time.”

“I asked Go— Chuck — for the ability, and he gave it to me,” said Cas.

“So you’re wanting me to be your guinea pig?” Dean sounded tense.

“No, I do not want you to be my guinea pig,” said Cas, puzzled. “I’m trying to help you, not force you to be my pet.”

“Will you be able to read my mind?” asked Dean, defensive.

“No,” said Cas. “I can examine your thoughts, as you know, but I will not. Your soul is a different system, so to speak. I will be able to discern your emotions.”

“Oh, that sounds just awesome,” said Dean with bitter sarcasm. He yanked the vacuum hose out of the car and coiled it, turning his back on Cas.

“Sam bears the same pain you do from this experience,” said Cas. “He as well was willing to die to escape. If this works with you, I can help him too.”

It made Dean’s mind up the instant Castiel mentioned helping Sam. “Okay.”

Dean faced Cas squarely, his back against the opening to the front passenger seat, his fists clenched and jaw tight. He was poised to attack, defend his position, or even escape into his sanctuary within a sanctuary.

“Do it,” ordered Dean.

Cas raised his palm towards Dean’s face, his movements slow and deliberate so that Dean could see what he was doing. Dean stood stock still in place, but when Cas got within an inch, Dean jerked his head back and to the side. His arm flashed up and blocked Cas’s hand in an instant, his eyes flashing in defensive fear.

Cas stepped back and raised both hands, palms open in the human gesture of surrender. The fear in Dean’s eyes stung. He’d come to cherish nothing more than seeing hard-won trust and friendship in the gazes of these two men. This hurt, and felt like a personal failing. He hung his head.

Dean wrapped both hands around one of Cas’s upraised palms, and gently forced him to lower it.

This was another moving thing about humans. Kindness. Not a function that existed in angel programming, but so worth learning and experiencing.

“That was reflex,” said Dean in the low, rough voice that spoke of affection. “That was every son of a bitch who’s hit me and cut on me and - I didn’t mean it to hurt. I do trust you.”

Cas braved looking at Dean. There was kindness in his eyes, affection. Love. “I have spent eons as a soldier. Trusting interactions are - new. Forgive me if I get them wrong.”

“You didn’t get anything wrong,” insisted Dean. “I have baggage, that’s all. Try again. Just - don’t do that intense stare you have when you’re getting ready to smite something. It’s scary, okay?”

“Oh. I understand,” said Cas, relieved to know where he’d gone wrong. “Eye contact. Be - reassuring.”

Dean chuckled. “When you’re invading someone’s space, or sense of safety, you use your eyes and your expression to tell them you care.”

Cas met Dean’s eyes. “I care.”

He raised his hand again, realizing he could focus on the task once he was in contact and Dean felt safe.

_I feel nothing but affection for you, and the desire to protect and heal you._

Cas projected those thoughts into his expression, and Dean’s eyes remained soft and trusting when Cas touched him.

* * *

 

Castiel rested his palm, warm and gentle, across Dean’s forehead. Strange, but kinda nice-feeling.

Then there was light, and Dean cried out sharply in sudden, overwhelming fear and dread, because something immensely stronger than him could see, feel, and manipulate the deepest core of his vulnerability. He screamed, bracing himself.

It was benevolent. It didn’t claw at him, it - loved him. It cared.

He sagged in Cas’s arms, unable to support his own weight. Dizzy. He hadn’t even known if angels were _capable_ of love.

Cas certainly seemed to care a great deal about them, seemed to have adopted them as family, but that wasn’t—

Cas loved him with a searing intensity that brought tears to his eyes, because he knew how much it hurt to care that deeply.

Dean closed his eyes and surrendered, sinking down onto the familiar comfort of the Impala’s seat when his legs couldn‘t hold him any longer.

* * *

 

Cas’s free arm tightened unbidden around Dean, and he pressed his forehead hard against Dean’s shoulder, holding him even after he collapsed into the support of his beloved car. In theory, human and angel souls were so different, he should be unaffected by the transfer of Dean’s weight to him. What hurt a human should not even touch an angel.

Theory was wrong. Cas felt tears sting his eyes, and his breathing became rough and painful.

Dean didn’t just carry personal trauma, of things that had happened to him. He felt remorse on a level that must have almost killed him. For what he’d done in hell, for everything that had happened to Sam, for what he’d done under the influence of the mark. For all the people he couldn’t save and the mistakes he made. Remorse was how he kept himself standing: every day was a punishment he forced himself to endure under it. Pain and trauma soothed him, because they helped ease the pain of that remorse.

Castiel learned that angels were capable of sobbing. But he got to do what he’d always wanted: To hold Dean Winchester close and soothe his soul.

This human he loved was scarred deeply. His pain came not only from his time in what he so flippantly called West Guantanamo, it was only the most recent wound. The others were scars, layers and layers of them, healed over but very much present.

Castiel kept his palm pressed to Dean’s forehead, trying with all his might to smooth and soothe those scars. Some of them eased away, but mostly they were a part of his soul, making up its structure in a way that could not be erased without erasing Dean himself. They were inextricably interwoven with intense love.

He closed his eyes, frustrated. God - Chuck wouldn’t give him a power that didn’t work, surely?

Seeking out that love led to searing grief. Grief for his father, his mother, for Sam - for every bit of pain Sam had ever suffered, for Charlie, for Bobby, for Lisa and Ben, for Jo, and Ellen….. For Castiel himself. This was where Dean was very nearly broken. He’d lost them all again in that cell. He’d sat mere feet from his brother, utterly alone and unable to take the grief.

Castiel focused on that broken ache, on soothing it.

 _I see. I comprehend. I care. You are not alone, Dean Winchester. You are loved, because you love so intensely. Those who are gone from this world are content. They remember you and love you. People you’ve saved, people whose faces you don’t even remember love you. They love you, Dean. Not loved, love. No matter where they are, or where you are_.

Dean heaved in a deep sigh and let it out slowly, relaxing into Castiel’s arms and leaning into his chest. It was a very un-Dean-like behavior, relaxing this deeply and not only allowing but seeking close physical contact.

Cas realized only then that he’d been thinking of this all wrong. This wasn’t fixing, the way one would heal a wounded body. The soul was what made up the Dean Winchester who was so precious to him and so important to the universe, and those scars were an integral part of it. The power Chuck had granted him was the ability to comfort that soul, not change it.

The idea filled Cas with love, and Dean’s soul responded with a surge of brightness. Dean heaved another deep sigh, going completely limp, a smile forming on his face.

The pain that had been haunting Cas lifted completely from Dean, who was now breathing calm and even. Cas reluctantly removed his palm from Dean’s forehead. He wanted to offer comfort to Dean for hours, but the task was complete. Dean was at peace.

Castiel instinctively wrapped his now-free arm around Dean and hugged him tight.

“You’re a most beautiful human, Dean Winchester. It has been my honor to be your friend.”

Dean groaned, and Cas knew he’d gotten some part of the phrasing wrong. Sensitivity, perhaps? Or maybe he’d committed the sin of sounding too much like a character from a movie marketed to female humans. But Dean also had that tiny little almost-smile on his face that indicated he was enjoying something he felt he had to pretend he disliked.

* * *

 

Dean was at peace. Heart, soul, mind, and body. Relaxed. Content. He was cherished and sheltered in the wings of an angel, and not some wussy daytime TV angel. One who commanded heavenly armies.

Pretty damn _awesome_.

There were tears in his eyes, but he was content for them to be there. Because the faces that were always in the back of his mind were alive in heaven and looking at him with love. And that was a feeling he didn’t want to wipe away any part of.

They were okay.

Cas had just seen - sensed - a lot. A lot of broken and ugly. But he hadn’t slammed Dean away in disgust. That sense of deep caring had only increased the more the angel had dug around in the black mess that was his soul. “How can - an angel of the Lord forgive what you saw in there?”

“I’m not God, Dean,” said Cas, his voice soft, even tender. “Much less humanity’s twisted ideas of him. I’m just - the beta version of his greatest and most complex creation. I just got to meet the soul of the man he values so much, and see why. There’s nothing to forgive, Dean. You are what God created you to be. You’re a work of art.”

“If I’m a work of art, I’m Dogs Playing Poker,” said Dean.

“You love so intensely, it awes me,” said Cas.

“I do not!” protested Dean.

“You love your brother, and your parents. You love your friends, and - many women - and your car, and humanity in general, and you love me.”

“Okay - okay, maybe I do. So?”

“So I would like you to forgive yourself,” said Cas.

“Not gonna happen,” Dean said, inviting no argument.

“You are good, Dean Winchester. One day, I hope you believe that.”

Thing was, he kinda did. There was a new-found peace in something that might be described as his soul. Was he really the sum of all his bad acts and failures and mistakes? Or was that the price of free will?

The angel who was still standing protectively in the open doorway of the Impala with a hand wrapped tight around Dean’s shoulder had once betrayed them, and attempted to become a God in a move that unleashed the Leviathan. He caused thousands of human and angel deaths in that one period. Bobby had died as a result of Cas’s decisions.

But he and Sam had both forgiven Cas. When Dean looked at Cas, he saw a loyal friend and warrior who sometimes got it wrong. Someone deeply good. An angel who had become capable of love and caring.

It was easy to be a good person if you were a suburban dad with challenges that involved when to water the lawn and whether he should allow Ben to sleep over with his friend with the shady parents. In a constant flood of mythological and supernatural battles with things that should exist only in nightmares, maybe holding himself to soccer dad standards of morality was self-torture.

Cas had just seen the core of what he was, and called it good. So was he the sum of everything he did, good and bad, with good carrying the day at the end? If that was how he saw Cas, didn‘t he and Sam warrant that same forgiving outlook?

Hell, even God himself was a good but flawed being with a trail of truly monumental screw-ups in his past. Was that the standard he was going to hold himself to? Being better than _God_?

“You think it’s really okay to do that? Forgive myself?” asked Dean. “What right do I have to forgive myself for harming another person?”

“Your self-loathing is a form of self-punishment,” said Cas. “Would you look at you, and say to yourself, that man deserves to be punished? Or would you maybe say thank you? Or at the very least, tell that man he has a good soul and deserves to be loved as deeply as he loves others?”

Dean stood, and walked around to where Cas had found him a week before, passed out hidden in a corner clinging to his car, utterly lost. After saving the world. After being treated like the worst of the worst. After thinking at last he could hang up his hat with the promise of never coming back.

It seemed like looking back at an alternate reality. There was a calm glow where sickening weight had been. He was a good man. He helped save the world. He loved his family. He had a life where he could fight what needed to be fought, and the honor of being able to help people for real.

And he was loved, and whole.

“I might offer that guy a slice of pie and a hug,” said Dean.

“Close enough,” said Cas.

 


End file.
